Today's Obsession: Microdata

As the HTML5 specification continues to be hammered out and experimented with across the web, we all begin to be more familiar with its more gee-whiz aspects, like animation and video. But Webmonkey shows off something I literally had no idea was in the spec: microdata.
Microdata is essentially a way for you to specify what something is in a clearer way more specific to your needs—so while markup can tell a search engine spider generally that 3020 North Albany Avenue is a string of text, it has no way of knowing that it is House of Pretty’s street address in Chicago (send presents!).

So adding a microfomat to specify what exactly this is, you could add:

<address>3020 North Albany Avenue</address>

to the mix, and suddenly you have two ways to deliver complex information: the literal text string, and the implied meaning. Cool!